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Episode 623: Time Planning or Time Tracking?

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Join us today for an episode about why tracking and timing are both important...

Today's episode is focused on learning how and why you should plan and track...

In today’s episode about investing in others by stewarding your time, I talk with you about the difference between time planning and time tracking, why both are important but they are fundamentally different, and some tips to do both without wasting time.

Join in on the Chat below.

00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 623 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm with st Clemons, motivational speaker and limitation breaker. I challenge you to invest yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world using your time, the talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to recognize your limitations or an illusion and develop resilience is key and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardships called podcast with my friend Scott Mader.
00:00:43 And what you do is you do that for three or four days and then look back at it and look for patterns. Look for the things that you're doing that are shallow work, that their work that is, it's busy work, it's important work, but it isn't really moving the needle. Look for things that you're doing that are deep work that generate ideas and income and motion.
00:01:02 Look for the things that you're doing that are complete waste of time. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast will learn to invest in yourself,
00:01:26 invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world Today's episode about investing in others by stewarding your time. I talk with you about the difference between time planning and time tracking. I share why both are important, but they are fundamentally different things and I give you some tips to do both without actually wasting a bunch of time as we talk about stewarding your time.
00:01:59 Wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long? It turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon when you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission will come back to support the show. Just that quick. If you enjoy the show when you are ready to buy from Amazon,
00:02:21 just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon it sounds funny to talk about the difference between planning and tracking and talk about why it's important to know the difference and understand these, especially when we're talking about our use of time. You know the real truth is most of the time people think they do a pretty good job of planning how they're going to use their time and I think most people think they've got a pretty good feel for how they actually use it.
00:02:52 And yet what's interesting is time after time when I've challenged people on that and had them actually do some exercises, help them really dial in on how they're actually using their time. They usually end up being dramatically shocked. They see a ton of things that they're doing with their time that were completely unaware of, they were blind to before because the truth is there's a difference between planning and tracking and they're both important.
00:03:22 You know, at the, at the end of the day. There's an interesting thing when when we plan our use of time, when we look forward into the future and think about this is what I want to do with my time today, these are the things on my task list. I've got a meeting at two o'clock and I've got this call and I've got this thing to do and here's some empty time and I'm going to put these tasks into that time.
00:03:48 One of the things that often happens when we block off our time like that is we end up oftentimes squirreling away and wasting a certain amount of that time. You know, you, you scroll through Facebook for a certain amount of time and before you know it three minutes turns into 30 minutes. I don't know if that's ever happened to you, but I know it's happened to me.
00:04:09 You know, sometimes we'll plan out our time and then an emergency will come up. That actually happened to me today where I've had like three or four emergencies come up in the afternoon. So this block of time that I originally planned for something I needed to pivot and use it for something else because I determined that that emergency, that thing that came up was both more important and more urgent than what I had originally planned my time for,
00:04:39 but I did actually think about it because see, the truth is I had a plan for my time and I needed to pivot and adjust it. That's part of what tracking is for tracking is looking backwards. What happened? Planning is looking forward, what do I want to happen, and the two are important because with that information, you become begin to reflect and refine and change your activities,
00:05:07 your mindset, your behavior, your habits, and improve over time. There's really two processes and one mental step here. There's the need for the process and a way of planning. There's a need for the process and the way of tracking and then there's a mental step of actually reflecting on these and making adjustments over time. They're both important because the tracking gives you the information so that you can make changes and refine things.
00:05:40 The planning is important because even on a day when everything goes crazy, having a plan gives you a target to pull back to. It always gives you something to move back towards. It gives you a norm or an attempt. You have to have a certain amount of grace about the fact that sometimes things are gonna go wrong and you're just not going to get everything done that you wanted to get done.
00:06:03 And that's okay. But using that process of planning and tracking, you can begin to reflect over time. And what's interesting is you'll begin to notice patterns. You'll begin to notice habits that you have. You'll begin to notice things that distract you and pull you away. And after time, after a while, you begin to notice these things and then you can begin to build actual habits and processes and systems that will allow you to change it.
00:06:33 That's part of what we do when we're working on how we use our time. We use the information from tracking compared against the plan, and then review and reflect. So some simple tips to do this. First off, if you've never tracked your time ever. One of the first activities that I love to do with clients is called the 15 minute miracle.
00:06:53 What you literally do is just take a sheet of paper and divide it down. The left hand side in 15 minute increments and in 15 minutes is just too short for you to do it in 30 minutes. No more than 30 minutes though. Don't do an hour of time block. So you just literally put, you know, five 15 five 35 45 six o'clock so on all the way down from whatever time you get up to whatever time you go to bed most nights and then set an alarm on your watch so that every 15 minutes that alarm goes off.
00:07:23 It just gives you a little soft vibrate or beep depending on what kind of device you have. And all you do is jot down two or three things that you did during that last 15 minutes. The kind of bulk of the things you do. You don't try to capture every moment, every activity, every second, but you capture the bulk of what you did.
00:07:40 And that 15 minute block. I mainly spend watching reading Facebook and looking at post or I mainly spend a deepened work on a spreadsheet or whatever. You just capture that and what you do is you do that for three or four days and then look back at it and look for patterns. Look for the things that you're doing that are shallow work, that their work that is,
00:08:00 it's busy work, it's important work, but it isn't really moving the needle. Look for things that you're doing that are deep work that generate ideas and income and motion. Look for the things that you're doing that are complete waste of time and when you begin to look for those patterns, you'll start to notice that there are things that you're doing. You'll even start to see an energy rhythm throughout the day and honestly for tracking your time.
00:08:26 Yeah, there's apps and there's tools and there's all sorts of things, but a simple spreadsheet will work and I actually use the same spreadsheet to both plan and track. It's available in my stewardship of time series that you can sign up for. You'll get a sample spreadsheet, kind of a simple one. It also lets you do weekly planning and kind of look at how you're spending your time in the week or how you plan to spend your time during the week so you can use these tools to simplify it because you don't want to have 72 tools involved in tracking your time.
00:08:55 You want it to be relatively painless because the truth is if it takes you more than five or 10 minutes to actually fill something out and track your time, then that becomes the waste of time. And so the spreadsheet that I use, you can do relatively quickly sign up for those tips if you'd like access to that as well. But by putting this in place,
00:09:15 it begins to let you know what's going on and knowing now I sound like GI Joe knowing's half the battle right now, knowing is the first step towards beginning to change behavior. Now there's a lot of hard work that has to happen afterwards, but knowing is the first step. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber.
00:09:48 And listener. We challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four four two two two time tips and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time.
00:10:26 Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.


In today's episode, I talk with you about:

  • The difference between time planning and time tracking... 
  • Why both are important but they are fundamentally different...
  • Some tips to do both without wasting time...
  • and more.....

If you want to live a life that matters, don’t start when you get good; start now so you become good. – John C Maxwell

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Some of the Resources recommended in this episode:

I make a commission for purchases made through the following link.

Let Me Know What you Think Below....

Episode 618: The Spirituality of Time

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Join us today for an episode about the spiritual approach to time...

Today's episode is focused on having a good relationship with time...

In today’s episode about investing in yourself by stewarding your time, I talk with you about why recognizing your relationship with time is a spiritual exercise, how to use your time in a godly way, and what it means to be spiritual in your approach to time.

Join in on the Chat below.

00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 618 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey, I'm Matt ham, author of redefined rich and I challenge you to live richly by listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. That's what I mean by a spiritual view and approach to time. It's recognizing you and your relationship to both others, to God and your relationship to yourself and how they affect what you do,
00:00:38 what you say, and how you spend your time. And the truth is, that's the hard work. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast will learn to invest in yourself,
00:01:04 invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. In today's episode about investing in yourself by stewarding your time, I talk with you about why recognizing your relationship with time can be a spiritual exercise, how to use your time in a godly way. And what it means to really be spiritual in your approach to time. As we talk about stewarding your time,
00:01:39 wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long? It turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon when you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission. We'll come back to support the show just that quick. If you enjoy the show when you are ready to buy from Amazon,
00:02:01 just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon The truth is that we all have our own relationship with time. You know, time is a finite resource. It is something where we're all given the same 24 hours in a day, the same 168 hours in a week and once our time is gone, we, we can't get it back there. There's, there are ways to get back lost money.
00:02:32 There's ways to get back loss, other things, but time truly is a resource that once you've wasted it, once it's gone, once it's spent, it's gone forever. You know James chapter four verse 14 and says why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow? What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes and this idea,
00:03:00 this spiritual recognition that you only are given a certain amount of time on this earth and what you do with that time, that's what you can determine. That's what you have some input in. You get to make decisions about how you spend your time and what impact you make with the time that you have. Do you get to make choices about what you spend your time on and don't.
00:03:28 And the truth is that you can spend your time in a lot of different ways and you can look up after you've done it with regret, regret with, with fear, with with anger, with decisions about ha. I didn't even get enough rest. I didn't get enough sleep. I didn't get anything done that I wanted to get done. I've wasted my entire day are you can look up after you've spent your time in the day and say,
00:03:56 I have done well. I have spent my time in alignment with what I am called to do. I have spent my alignment and helping others. I spent my time growing myself, helping others and impacting the world in some way. You can also look up and say, I have spent today in rest. You know, we're coming out of what for many people is a holiday weekend.
00:04:23 And sometimes after you spend the day with your family or you spend your day resting and barbecuing or doing whatever it is that you do, you then feel guilty because you didn't work. And then when you're working, you feel guilty because you aren't spending time with your family. It's easy to constantly stress and strain about how you are spending your time and recognizing that you have a relationship with time and you have beliefs about it and the way you interact with it is determined by those beliefs is a spiritual exercise.
00:04:59 It's an exercise about looking at yourself. And the truth is you can manage your time in a godly way. You can put God first in your life. You can seek out wisdom about how you spend your time. You know, there are many passages in the Bible about seeking wisdom, seeking tools, finding the ways to just focus on the things that you need to focus on.
00:05:29 Cause the truth is if all you depend upon is yourself and your own self discipline, you'll never really get as far as if you plug in the right tools and the right accountability. If you plug in the belief and the focus on God first, that helps. Setting goals becomes a different exercise when you recognize the fact that you have to respond to how you're wired and how you've been made as well.
00:06:00 When you recognize the gravity of the limited amount of time you have and the fact that you are called to do a mission here, you have a job, you have something that you're being called to do. You have things that you are meant to be doing and if you don't spend your time doing those things, then that's the real tragedy. But to figure out what your calling is,
00:06:26 to figure out how to actually do this. The actual implementation of the hard work of using your time and these sort of good ways. That's the hard part. That's the spiritual part. That's the part that requires you looking inside yourself, making hard choices, looking inside yourself and being able to say no to certain things. Surrounding yourself with wise counsel so that you can begin to plug in the tools and the techniques that you need to do.
00:07:00 You know, when I talk about spirituality and time, immediately people think about things like prayer and meditation and don't get me wrong, these sorts of spiritual exercises, spiritual disciplines of you know, reading scripture, prayer time, meditation, time, taking time for yourself, putting in time for sleep and and effort. These things are important. They are vital to your longterm health and wellbeing and success,
00:07:28 but that's not the only thing I'm talking about. I'm also talking about being able to look deeply inside yourself and tell yourself the truth about how you view time. Are you constantly saying things like, I never have enough time. Are you constantly saying things like, I run from one thing to the next thing and just never know what's coming next. If you are,
00:07:54 then you need to plug yourself in to something that allows you to begin to view your time differently because the actual act of how you view your time affects how you use it. That's what I mean by a spiritual view and approach to time. It's recognizing you and your relationship to both others, to God and your relationship to yourself and how they affect what you do,
00:08:23 what you say and how you spend your time. And the truth is that's the hard work. You know, you can read a book, you can pick up a, uh, a blog and read about how to use certain tools and techniques, but the tools and techniques aren't what makes the change. What makes the change in your life is you, you doing the hard work,
00:08:47 you doing the work that needs to be done. But that's the hard part. That's the challenge. You know, the truth is, if it was as easy as just reading a book, we'd all spend our time, well, we'd all spend our money well, we'd never have any regrets and everyone would be doing exactly what they're called to do, but that's not the world we live in.
00:09:11 And the truth is it's because most of us don't do the hard work of examining ourselves and our own internal relationship with time. If you need some help with that, I'm always willing to sit down and spend 30 minutes helping you focus in on what's going on in your own mindset and belief around time. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:09:43 As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four four two two two time tips,
00:10:15 and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.


In today's episode, I talk with you about:

  • Why recognizing your relationship with time is a spiritual exercise... 
  • How to use your time in a godly way... 
  • What it means to be spiritual in your approach to time....
  • and more.....

I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.  - Martin Luther

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Some of the Resources recommended in this episode:

I make a commission for purchases made through the following link.

Let Me Know What you Think Below....

Episode 613: Time Management is a Myth

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Join us today for an episode about some of the biggest myths in time management and what to do about them...

Today's episode is focused on overcoming the myths of time management...

In today’s episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time, I talk with you about some of the biggest myth’s about time management, why the truth is it’s not about managing time anyway, and a few tips to get more productive anyway.

Join in on the Chat below.

00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 613 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hello my friend. This is dr Brad Miller from the pathway to promise podcast. If you'd like to stay inspired to stay on your pathway to promise you can't do better than listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. That's how you get more productive anyway, so I just gave you some tools and tips for each of these myths, but the truth is you have to experiment with them to find out what works for you and don't be afraid to tweak the system that the guru has,
00:00:51 if that makes it work better for you, including my own, including the coaching I do. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time,
00:01:35 I talk with you about some of the biggest myths when it comes to time management, why? The truth is it's not about managing your time anyway and I give you a few tips so that you can get more productive even if you aren't managing your time. As we talk about stewarding your time, wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long? It turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon when you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission.
00:02:07 We'll come back to support the show just that quick. If you enjoy the show when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon let's talk a little bit about time management. You know, often people come to me as a client and that's what they're interested in is time management. But I really hate that description. I've talked about that before on the podcast. In fact, I believe that one of the biggest myths out there about time is that we can manage our time. The truth is we can't manage our time.
00:02:45 All we have is 168 hours in a week. We can't make it grow. We can't do anything to make us have more time.
00:02:53 And in fact, if you suddenly had 28 hours in a day, if you suddenly had 190 hours in a week without changing your mindset and your behavior,
00:03:03 you would actually just fill up those extra hours with the same busy tasks that distracts you today. So the truth is you can't imagine CLI manage your time.
00:03:15 Some of the other myths that are going on, we talk about budgeting our time. I actually use that phrase with clients.
00:03:23 You can budget your time, but you have to budget it in a particular way. See budgeting your time here.
00:03:30 A lot of times what people hear is they'll have a minute by minute plan of how everything is going to happen in their day and then what happens if something goes wrong,
00:03:39 they get distracted, they get frustrated, they throw the budget out the window and they start over because things interrupt them.
00:03:46 The the emergency things that the updates come in and just derail everything they do, but the truth is you can manage to manage or budget your time in different ways.
00:04:02 You just have to be aware that it's not that minute by minute perfection that you're actually aiming for. We also talk about planning every single day and that is important.
00:04:14 It's important to have task list. It's important to have focus. It's important to know and plan the next day,
00:04:20 the day before a little bit and budget your time and put in blocks of time that are important for things.
00:04:27 But the truth is if you want to just go from a day to day perspective, then you lose track of the bigger picture.
00:04:37 One of the other myths, it's all about getting it all done. It's about doing everything possible. And the truth is now it's about getting the right things done.
00:04:46 The real key is identifying what are the things to focus on and what shouldn't you focus on. This is why we often end up multitasking.
00:04:54 Another myth that you can do more than one thing at a time. You can't, and if you're trying to just simply check things off a list and get everything done and you aren't paying attention to what are your real priorities,
00:05:07 what are the most important things? What are the things that leverage and get more done going down the line,
00:05:13 you know, where's the 20% that gets you 80% of the results? Then if you don't do that,
00:05:19 you end up wasting things because you're spending a lot of time getting the unimportant things done instead of moving the big rocks,
00:05:28 which leads us to another myth. You know, you'll hear people talk about putting down the big three every day and you'll hear people talk about scheduling your hardest task first thing in the morning while your decision fatigue is low.
00:05:42 However, you have to be aware of the fact that we all have different kinds of energy levels. We have different rhythms to our energy throughout the day,
00:05:52 and you have to pay attention to your energy throughout the day, throughout the week, even throughout the month.
00:05:58 To be able to know when to put those most difficult tasks that take the most energy, they take the most mindset,
00:06:05 they take the most focus. You don't want to necessarily always put them in the morning. If you're flat in the morning,
00:06:11 you don't want to put them on Friday. If Friday is the day that you're drained, you have to pay attention to your own rhythms.
00:06:19 See, the truth is it's not about managing time anyway. That's not the focus. That's not really what we want to do.
00:06:27 Instead, what we want to do is focus on our priorities and our energy. We look at how we manage our own priorities and we focus on our own internal energies.
00:06:40 What drives us forward? What is the thing that gets us jazzed up? What is the thing that gets all of our energy going?
00:06:47 And these are the things that we're really called to do. And then from there, what we can begin to do is set really big goals.
00:06:56 We can look at the big picture and then you can dial that big picture back into capturing all of it in an external brain,
00:07:05 capturing all of it into a list system of some sort that you can trust so that you aren't carrying around all of this information in your head that's constantly distracting you and pulling you in the next direction.
00:07:17 And then in those lists you can focus on not just the big goal. See, sometimes we make a list and some of them are really easy like call Steve or make this,
00:07:28 but others are big tasks like file my taxes or get the party planned. And instead what we need to do is focus on for every single task,
00:07:37 even big projects. What is the next smallest action I need to take? So when I'm talking about organizing the party,
00:07:46 what do I need to do? Do I need to decide on a theme? Do I need to get invitations out?
00:07:51 Do I need to actually just write names on the invitation? Do I need to put stamps on the envelopes?
00:07:57 What are the small tasks that make up that big task? And the truth is you won't know all of them,
00:08:02 but by putting many of them down and giving the lists that you make context and depth, you'll make more progress.
00:08:10 You'll actually get a lot more done. You'll be more productive. And it's, it's a thing that you have to dial into your own personality,
00:08:19 your own mindset, your own belief, your own history. It takes time to develop a productivity system.
00:08:26 There are tons of ones out there that come off the shelf and people will swear that this is the system that turned their life around.
00:08:33 And now you should try and do exactly the same thing. But what I do when I approach this as a coach or in my course,
00:08:41 productivity for your passion, I always take the approach of no, let's first identify you, your needs,
00:08:50 your priorities, your personality, your rhythms, and then let's plug in the tools and the processes and adapt them to you.
00:09:01 That's how you get more productive anyway, so I just gave you some tools and tips for each of these myths,
00:09:08 but the truth is you have to experiment with them to find out what works for you and don't be afraid to tweak the system that the guru has,
00:09:17 if that makes it work better for you, including my own, including the coaching I do. Throughout that,
00:09:24 what you need to do is dial in, find the ways to be productive anyway. Remember, it's not about managing your time,
00:09:31 it's about managing your energy. It's not about managing time, it's about focusing on your priorities and as you do that,
00:09:41 you'll get more done and what's more important, you'll get the right things done. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:09:57 As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:10:09 If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four four two two two time tips,
00:10:30 and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time. Until next time, invest your time, your talent,
00:10:40 and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.


In today's episode, I talk with you about:

  • Some of the biggest myth’s about time management...
  • Why the truth is it’s not about managing time anyway...
  • A few tips to get more productive anyway...
  • and more.....

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. – Peter Drucker

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Some of the Resources recommended in this episode:

I make a commission for purchases made through the following link.

Let Me Know What you Think Below....

Episode 608: Busy Versus Productive

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Join us today for an episode about the reason you need to stop thinking of busy as a badge of honor...

Today's episode is focused on learning to distinguish productive from busy...

In today’s episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time, I talk with you about the difference between busy and productive, why productive is the goal but busy is often what’s honored, and how to shift from busy to productive.

Join in on the Chat below.

00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 608 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Ryan England with core matters and the blue collar culture podcast. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasure is to live out your calling. Having the ability to grow yourself and your business is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. No,
00:00:39 we've talked about being busy beyond belief. We, we share how busy we are. We constantly talk to each other about our busy-ness as we run about the day and we almost wear it as a badge of honor, as, as if being busy is somehow a good thing. And don't get me wrong, I used to do that as well. I would work in the corporate world and I used to talk about how busy I was during the day and welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts.
00:01:10 If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true color. In the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can and today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time. I talk with you about the difference between busy and productive, why productive is the goal, but busy is so often what's honored and how to shift from being busy to being productive.
00:01:52 As we talk about stewarding your time, wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long? It turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon when you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission will come back to support the show. Just that quick, if you enjoy the show when you are ready to buy from Amazon,
00:02:15 just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon all too often. When asked, how are you doing or what's going on? The answer that we all give almost automatically is,
00:02:30 I'm so busy. You know, we've talked about being busy beyond belief. We, we share how busy we are.
00:02:37 We constantly talk to each other about our busy-ness as we run about the day and we almost wear it as a badge of honor,
00:02:46 as as if being busy is somehow a good thing and don't get me wrong, I used to do that as well.
00:02:53 I would work in the corporate world and I used to talk about how busy I was during the day and even now I'll,
00:03:00 I'll, at times I'll share with someone how busy I am, but the truth is that's really not the goal we should be aiming for.
00:03:10 We shouldn't be aiming to be busy. We should be aiming to be productive. You know, there is a difference between these two things.
00:03:21 Productivity is a good thing, busy-ness, not necessarily. Productivity is also a skill. It's something that you have to learn how to do.
00:03:32 It's not something that comes naturally and just were born. Knowing how to be productive. Busy-ness. On the other hand is something that especially in today's world is way too easy to allow that to happen and you know this is true whether the pandemic is going on like it is now,
00:03:50 or whether it's a time when that's not true. Busy is feeling overwhelmed, feeling rushed, feeling like the world is happening to you instead of you happening to the world.
00:04:04 Productivity is about making choices, making decisions, deciding what's most important and getting those things done and saying no to other things and in fact that's part of what makes being productive so hard is productivity is really not determined by the yeses in your life as much as it is by the nose.
00:04:27 Now, don't get me wrong, I still frame it as this kind of thinking. The real truth is to be productive,
00:04:33 you have to have a big enough yes to allow you to say no to many other things. You know,
00:04:41 productivity, most of us would would agree is the goal for us in our life. We want to be more productive.
00:04:48 We want to get the right things done. We want to be able to say, at the end of the day,
00:04:56 I really feel like I've had a good day, but instead, oftentimes what we honor in society is busy-ness.
00:05:06 We look at the person who's working 1418 hour days and we think of that as a badge of honor.
00:05:15 Now, could you work a 14 hour day and be productive? Absolutely. But the only way to do that is to actually set about it and do structure.
00:05:24 And I will tell you that if you work nothing but 14 hour days, it's going to almost be impossible to remain productive longterm because at some point there's a law of diminishing returns.
00:05:37 At some point, your brain and your body begin to say, enough, I can't keep doing this.
00:05:43 Think about it. You've had those weeks where you've run 24 hours a day from Monday through Friday, and then on Saturday you just collapse into a little ball and lay there on the couch and binge Netflix and eat potato chips and do all of the other things that you know you shouldn't be doing and you feel almost ashamed on Monday morning.
00:06:09 But then you'll start it all over again. Then you'll do the same thing to yourself day in and day out.
00:06:15 That's because busy is considered a badge of honor, but the truth is you can shift from busy to productive.
00:06:26 Even if you're in a job where someone else really controls your day to day decision making and they're ordering you what to do during the day,
00:06:36 you can begin to make small shifts. Maybe those shifts start outside of your work or maybe they start inside of your work.
00:06:45 I worked in a middle management position and I still managed to take control of my time and I began to shift from just being busy to being productive and what was interesting is all of a sudden I started to get more done in 40 hours than most people got done in 60 or 80 because I began to identify what are the real key factors,
00:07:06 what are the things that are the most important for me to get done and say yes to and let me put in the time and energy to do those and do those with excellence.
00:07:18 And I'll have to say no to some other things. Here's some key questions you can ask yourself. If you want to begin to shift towards being productive,
00:07:27 you have to be deliberate. You have to be intentional. If something comes into your sphere of influence,
00:07:36 if someone comes to you and says, Hey, would you do this for me? Or if a decision comes to you where you have to add a new task or a new commitment to your life,
00:07:47 ask yourself these questions. What do I need to put to one side so that I can say yes to this new opportunity?
00:07:56 In other words, what am I going to have to say no to if I say yes to this opportunity?
00:08:01 Because you can't constantly just add new things on. You've got to let go of some things, so what is it that I need to say no to so that I can say yes to this and are those things that I'm saying no to less important to me is this new opportunity in my best interest,
00:08:21 in the best interest of my family? Does it help me grow? Does it help me serve others?
00:08:26 Does it help me expand my influence? Does it help me do what I am called to do? If that's true,
00:08:34 then maybe this is something you say yes to, but then what are you going to say no to?
00:08:41 Another thing is to really honestly reflect, is this something you even want to do? The truth is oftentimes we are guilted into saying yes to things that the truth is we didn't want to do in the first place.
00:08:56 Don't allow other people's priorities to determine what you allow into your life. Do you even want to do this?
00:09:06 Is this something that you are called to do? Is this something that moves you in the right direction for your world?
00:09:13 And if you say yes to those three questions, then you need to think about what boundaries you set.
00:09:19 What are the conditions that you put on this? Is this a temporary thing? Is this a permanent thing?
00:09:25 Is this something that you're going to have to make sure you carve out time from now going on forever to be able to do?
00:09:33 Is this instead something that's just for today and a temporary, maybe even for a while you have to work those 14 hour days,
00:09:41 but there is a predetermined beginning, middle and end to it. You know the scope and you've decided that it's okay to expand your time in this limited instance because the yes is important enough.
00:09:58 See, the truth is that's usually not what we do. Instead what we do is say yes to everything that comes along and continue to just add task after task assignment after assignment,
00:10:12 commitment after commitment until we look up and all we've done in our life and in our week and in our month and in our day is run from emergency to emergency,
00:10:23 from fire to fire and we've never really made forward progress on those things that we want to do and that we're called to do.
00:10:33 This is where coaching helps. This is why I coach on productivity because it's so important to our wellbeing and to our ability to serve others.
00:10:47 Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener,
00:10:59 we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:11:10 If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four four two two two time tips and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time.
00:11:36 Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.


In today's episode, I talk with you about:

  • The difference between busy and productive...
  • Why productive is the goal but busy is often what’s honored...
  • How to shift from busy to productive...
  • and more.....

Being busy is not the same as being productive.  In fact, being busy is a form of laziness- lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. - Anonymous

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